On Voting

Given no other options, I will choose reliably mediocre over dangerously stupid.

Unfortunately, we do not get to choose who we want to put in office, only between the options presented to us.

Pretending that we ever have the opportunity to do otherwise is a prescription for misery or revolution.

Ghost Shark Communist

I would like to produce a cable news show called Ghost Shark Communist. Every week's episode would feature 3 shocking stories about one the titular topics, but here's the gimmick: you don't know which fearsome terror you're learning about until halfway through the segment. Then, the big reveal with a loud splash page and a scream of GHOST, SHARK, or COMMUNIST!!!

So maybe we start by showing a Caribbean ocean scene, with beaches and sunbathers and innocent, meaty children playing in the surf, but then we pull back and see an old pirate ship run aground nearby. GHOST!

Then we have a story about a dying grandma whose pension is being seized by the progressive socialist government... of Atlantis! SHARK!

Back to the ghost pirates... They've invaded a sugar plantation and started a co-op garden! COMMUNISTS!

We'd get expert commentators and secret documents and all sorts of exclusive content that we made up on the spot, and every week would feature hushed portentious suggestions that these 3 forces were colluding to undermine the United States, or take away your freedoms, or put iodine in name brand cola or something. And we'd encourage you to phone your congressman.

Oh, it would be grand.

Collective Memory and the Rule of Awful People

One could hope that in the age of the Internet, our national memory would be a little bit better than in times past - that past errors and successes would be handily recorded and remain available to the masses for their consumption, and that the people involved in those decisions would be justly rewarded or shunned for their performances.

(nicked from BoingBoing)
From The New York Times, November 5, 1999:CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.
---
The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression.
---
'The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. ''We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

Guess which ideology is still calling the shots. Brilliant.
(nicked from BoingBoing)

Regarding Vista 64 Home Premium

Let's say you're in the market for a new toaster. You got to the store and look around, and you find a really good one. It's all shiny and new and has a lot of great features - some of which you don't need, but what the hey, it's the biggest and best one out there and you might as well get it.

One of the nice things about this particular toaster is that it has both a light and a dark setting. You think, hey, that's pretty handy. I'll probably want to make dark toast quite frequently. So you plunk down way too much money for this new toaster with its light and dark settings, and the cashier hands you a box. You take the box home, because dammit, you have bread to toast, and it's not getting any toastier all by itself.

Now, when you get that box home and open it up, I suppose you expect to find a nice toaster with a little dial on the front that says light and dark. That would make sense. But what you actually find is a toaster with a dial on it that just says light. No dark. Well, hell, how do you make dark toast then?

In the bottom of the box is a very politely-worded note explaining that you are a dumbass, and couldn't possibly be serious about making dark toast. It is a much too advanced process. But, if you really want to try to make dark toast (which is awesome, by the way), just mail in a check for $10, and they will happily send you ANOTHER TOASTER, which you technically already own, but which was not included in the box. This one will have a dial set to dark.

Oh, and the toasters both share a single unique power cord, so you can only plug in one at a time.

And everything else in the kitchen is powered by the toaster.

And if you lose or forget the serial number, the toaster dies.

And the toast tastes shitty.

Masshole Report: Special Edition

Three words:

Motor Excise Tax

Fuck Massachusetts.

Massholes

For the past few months, as I've slowly become acquainted with my new home, one topic that frequently comes up in conversation is the experience of driving in this state. As many of you know, I hail from New Jersey, widely regarded as one of the most difficult places to drive, known for its aggressive commuters, high speeds, and punitive traffic laws. For a long time I've held that these factors were in fact advantages for a skilled and aware driver, as they train one to stay alert, drive defensively, and respond quickly. Further, the frequency of truly dangerous incidents is low enough to make the whole experience educational rather than punishing. Plus, most of the casual annoyances of driving in NJ, I have found, are offset by the frequent acts of courtesy I witnessed just about every day.

Connecticut, now those bastards are crazy. I've come closer to death, dismemberment, or insurance Hell on the roads of Connecticut more times than I care to remember. I had assumed until recently that the gentle Nutmeg State contained the most insane people driving cars on major highways per capita than any state in the nation. And in many ways, my interstate experiences along the New York to New Haven I-95 corridor continue to support this thesis.

But nothing, NOTHING could have prepared me for the nightmare of navigating the streets of the greater Boston metro area. Let's not mince words. The charnel houses of Hell overfloweth, and their rivers of gore seep out into the realm of men to form the pitted arteries of misery that make up the Massachusetts highway system. Each and every outing into this twisted, diseased labyrinth of hate drives me further down the path of madness, and makes me loathe the very clay from whence humanity was molded.

I recognize that bad drivers abound in all corners of the world. There is no geographic locus which draws bad drivers into its sphere of influence, or corrupts the minds of those who would take to its roads. But the sheer number of events, frustrations, near-misses, and heart-bursting moments I have seen on a daily basis just within a 10 mile radius of my apartment is truly mind-boggling.

In an attempt to prove I am not crazy, I have decided to begin chronicling every instance of massholery that I witness or am a victim of for one whole week. Each day I will record every negative event and rate its severity on a scale of 1 to 5:

1. Minor infraction; no action required.
2. Lesser infraction; minor inconvenience or corrective action required
3. Significant infraction; evasive action or noticeable danger to person or property
4. Major infraction; significant danger, evasion, or inconvenience involved
5. Extreme massholery; immediate danger of collision or injury, massive inconvenience, blatant illegality or just totally fucking stupid driver who deserves to be shot

And don't think such offenses are restricted to cars. This is a fruity liberal commie blue state, so there are plenty of people on mopeds, bicycles, skateboards, rollerblades, and dumbass segways out there acting like total jackasses, too. As the bumper sticker says, same road, same rights, same responsibilities.

I will then add all points gathered for the day and divide them by the total number of hours that my car (or the car I am traveling in) has spent not parked in my driveway or similarly safe place.

So, for example, today:

Masshole Report: Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Events

• Fuel truck making a left fails to yield to oncoming traffic. Rating: 3
• Woman waiting to parallel park stops directly alongside car exiting parking space, holding up traffic and preventing said car from leaving the very space she intends to occupy. Rating: 2
• Bicyclist cuts in front of oncoming car and then rides very very slowly for about 50 yards. Rating: 2
• Hatchback misses turn into parking lot, stops, reverses at high speed up active roadway for 30 yards, directly in front of people trying to exit said parking lot. Rating: 3
• Huge-ass Buick found parked inches from my driver's side door, forcing me to enter through passenger side. Rating: 4

Total Outing Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes (1.25)

Masshole Rating for Wednesday, September 19, 2007: 11.2

Over time, I hope to assemble some sort of index to quantitatively establish just how bad it is to drive here. Truly a noble enterprise, I can hear you say, in that admiring tone you take when speaking of me.

HillTV, Spawn of UUTV, is Dead

I just got a call from the inimitable Mr. Proctor with some sad news. Apparently, the Syracuse University Chancellor has dissolved the student group HillTV, formerly my own dear UUTV, over a matter of offensive content on one of their shows. The Post Standard has an article from the 19th on problems with the show "Over the Hill."

The show's description on the station's Web site invites people to "watch, get informed and get offended," and it seems to have hit its mark when it comes to being offensive, making light of issues such as eating disorders, date rape and lynching.

"We've had an unusually high number of problems regarding content sensitivity with their shows," said Rich Levy, HillTV's general manager and an SU junior. "I have seen some of the most recent episodes . . . I found a lot of their content to be highly offensive. A lot of it was just wholly inappropriate."

Levy took over the general manager position about three weeks ago.

I feel Rich's pain - we had to deal with a series of ill-conceived and problematic shows when I was General Manager. Hey, college is the time of your life when you get to fuck around. In our case, however, we were seen by maybe 12 people on cable access and the clunky, unreliable campus feed, so we were generally safe from scrutiny. Not so much now, it seems. From the Daily Orange:

Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor disbanded the student-run television station HillTV on Thursday.

Cantor spoke to former HillTV General Manager Rich Levy, the department heads and the former sports director at 4:30 p.m. to tell them of her decision to disable the station. Cantor also told the HillTV representatives of the administration's decision to create a new student-run television network on campus.

The HillTV Web site, HillTV.com, was removed Thursday evening.

Cantor did not allow the former HillTV members to speak in defense of the station.

This is the letter that has been floating around among alumni:

Dear HillTV/UUTV Alumni,

Many of you may already be aware of the recent activity at SU involving HillTV. As of tonight, Chancellor Nancy Cantor has shut us down. All production has ceased and HillTV as a recognized student organization NO LONGER EXISTS.

One of the entertainment programs, “Over the Hill” produced racially and sexually offensive content in a series of their programming. The Executive Staff members were in the process of reviewing their content and status of their show. No episode of "Over the Hill" has been approved by the Executive Staff since issues regarding the show's content were first brought to light this semester. We cancelled the show and were in the process of reworking our content sensitivity standards to make sure future programming did not have this kind of effect.

The members of HillTV, and in particular the Executive Staff, have sat through a series of town-hall meetings as well as internal meetings over the past few days. We wanted to solve the problem and move on, to continue working as a student-run organization.
However, we were not given the opportunity to work through this issue, even after the show was cancelled.

The future of our station, as well as the past, is gone.

The Orange Television Network and its general manager Andy Robinson now control the “Watson Studios” facility. We plan on working with OTN on an interim basis, but are planning to appeal the decision to permanently shut down HillTV.

Right now, we are asking for your encouragement, thoughts and guidance. It is important to us, as past and present members of HillTV to support the student organization we loved so much.

Katie Frey

There is media and administration contact info, too. I'll email that privately to anyone who would like to comment to the powers that be on this issue.

I'm going to reserve final judgement until I learn a little more about what exactly went down, but just from the above it seems that the faculty decided to take visible decisive action to cover for a potentially embarassing problem, so they punish the entire station for the sins of a few.

I don't know what the content of "Over the Hill" was, but let's assume it was bad. Like National Socialist Movement bad.

Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor Shut down the student run television station Thursday night. A packed house in Syracuse's Hendericks Chapel applauded the decision.

Yeah, that bad. So you've got a patently offensive and terrible show that people are complaining about. So the HillTV execs cancel it and start working on ways to prevent the National Socialists (that's Nazis, btw) from sneaking onto the schedule again. Now, AFTER the show has been cancelled, the SU faculty disbands the TV station entirely, apparently because the organization was far too flawed or corrupted to be trusted with making more shows.

But wait a minute. Then the chancellor asks the staff of the now defunct station to join the committee to form a new station? Uhhhhh... does anyone else see a logical conflict here? This sounds like classic CYA from the University.

I'm going to have to think about the best way to respond to this - letters, phonecalls, etc. Either way, the alums really need to go to bat on this one.


Update 10/23:
The wingers are out in force on this one. Apparently this, along with the banning of the BSA from campus earlier this year, is playing into the hands of the "poor oppressed conservative" crowd. Supporters of the HillTV staff will need to carefully avoid being forced into defending "Over the Hill" on the basis of freedom of speech. That's not the issue. The staff agreed with the public and (I'll say this as many times as I can) CANCELLED THE SHOW. The chancellor then arbitrarily disbanded the station without a review process. I'm pretty sure that's against the bylaws governing student organizations, but we all know that as far as student rights are concerned, those kinds of rules aren't worth the binders they're stacked in.

If David Horowitz gets involved, we're fucked.

I am not Ansel Adams

This trip has really illustrated to me the limitations of my camera. Bad weather aside, I'm just not getting a lot of great shots out of what could have been prize-winning museum pieces, the sale of which would fund the purchase of several private islands. Alas, blame my lack of global photographic chops on my little Elph.

You just can't do without an F-stop. Shooting a forest floor requires a level of shutter control that you're just not going to get with an automatic camera. And don't get me started on telephoto lenses. I shot elk from half a mile a way for ten minutes before I realized how ridiculous it was.

The shots that I hate missing the most, however, are the impossible moments. Like hitting a coastal switchback and having your vision rotate 270 degrees in ten seconds and seeing something beautiful at every point. Or having a gull hover five feet from your face in dewey fog for a split second before drifting away. Or catching the reflection of distant blue sky in a river while the rest of the landscape lies cloaked in grey.

Worst of all, today I hit Gold Beach just before sunset. Imagine skating past giant upthrust rocks on wide open sand lit in glorious golden hour sunlight. The diffuse atmoshperics would have made the camera choke and spit out a whitish blur - it could not capture the subtle mesh between ocean and land, where golden brushstrokes blurred the line until only the texture of the waves marked the division.

There are masters of photography that can capture that, and they do so in their own time, but most of us must be content with the experience alone. Leave the image to the calendars and postcards and concentrate on the moment as it happened to you personally. Some moments cannot be captured.

Local time:

Notes: In Your Honor

Foo Fighters

Normally I don't give in to impulse buying, but I spotted this dual-disc album at the Border's checkout while I was getting my Lewis Black fix last week. Whenever a band releases a two-disc album for the price of a regular it signals one of two things: 1) We're so big now we can do these huge experimental projects and be kind to our fans, or 2) We're on the long slow spiral to obscurity and need a hit something bad. In Your Honor splits the difference between these two options.

First off, the title track sucks. I mean seriously, it's dreary, pointless, and thankfully short. There's lots of droning and whining and feedback, which I guess fits in with Dave Grohl's new "I need a shave and a lozenge" neo grunge look. They may be shooting for some sort of Dark Side of the Moon or Quadrophenia style storytelling setup with the first track, but I'm just not hearing it materialize.

Fortunately, whatever they were going for in terms of continuity evaporates and they drop into some good old Foo Fighters high speed rock and roll, starting with No Way Back and their current hit single Best of You, both of which sound great while hitting the accelerator on I-95. The rest of the first disc is nothing but hard core driving rock reminiscent of the best elements of There is Nothing Left to Lose and The Colour and Shape. DOA and The Deepest Blues are Black are particularly good if you enjoy high-energy sound juxtaposed against dark, bitter, mournful lyrics (which I do).

They do something a little strange with the arrangement of the two discs; the first is, as I said, all hard rock. The second is all ballads, epics, and torch songs. The shift in Grohl's voice from grunge pop scream to resonant crooner is absolute. The guitar work on Over and Out and On the Mend are particularly good. However, I'll pass on Virginia Moon's bossanova lounge duet.

The hard/soft split of the album makes the second disc a bit of a sleeper and breaks up what could have been an excellent narrative flow for the album. It's as if you arranged the books of Lord of the Rings alphabetically. You can hear some tracks on the second disc that would resonate beautifully with some of the hard rock tracks if they were mixed together in sequence. In Your Honor as a whole could definitely benefit from the guiding hand of a fan's personal playlist, mixing the two discs into a seamless, well-paced storyline.

Which brings us to the chief complaint, the grand offense: the album has an aggressive copy protection scheme (the Suncomm stuff, I think). There are ways to bypass this, of course, but not being able to PLAY the thing on a computer unless you install their piece of crap media manager software is insulting. This is the first CD I've ever bought that I would rather rip whole cloth onto a drive and never play the disc itself again, purely because of the bullshit copy protect. What's so frustrating is that anyone serious about ripping and burning copies illegally will have absolutely no problem with the disc's defenses, but average users will be frustrated that they can't play music that they paid for in the method of their choice. Why the hell wouldn't you download tracks if this is the crap they put you through for doing the right thing?

Anyway, music industry rant aside, this is a pretty good album with twenty full tracks and a lot of variety.

Lemon Fresh

My computer cost more than one of these

The trick to big brand Tech Support is aggressiveness and independent research. After two weeks of fruitless software debugging, I've finally figured out the most likely culprit for the performance problems I've been having with my $3000 gimp-bot. The problem is HEAT! Yes, one of the fundamental aspects of matter and energy.

Most new laptops have rather complicated thermal regulation systems. Sensors track the temperatures of individual components, fan speed and efficiency, battery power, etc. and the system adjusts to compensate for high heat. That means throttling up the fans most of the time, but when one of the core processors really starts cranking above red line, the system actually slows performace to keep the chips from burning out. That means slow access speeds and low fps. That's essentially what's happening here. The clue that tipped me off? When you press Function+Z on a Dell, it resets the thermal sensors and recalculates performance requirements. If I were to do that during a lagging session of City of Heroes, guess what? Zoom! 50 fps! After a few seconds it dips back down to 5, of course, but at least now we know the guilty party.

So how to fix it? First I cleaned the fan exhausts and blew some dust out of the case. (Dell laptops have horrible flow-through by the way.) This helped a little, but the problem kicked up again after about ten minutes of strenuous play. That's unacceptable for a machine of this caliber. So it's back to the phone and an hour with "Peter" (who is not in India, we swear). In Dell's defense, they were very good about listening to my complaint and didn't argue with me about it being a hardware issue. By now I have a fairly large case file encompassing most of their troubleshooting script, so it wasn't hard to convince them. By Thursday my machine should be on its way to a service depot to have the heat sink and motherboard replaced.

Here's what I'm worried about: According to various posts on the Dell forums, this is not an isolated problem. Some have suggested that there may be a serious design flaw in the current XPS Gen 1 loadout. The original models were built with one brand of Intel board, Northwood, and they have since switched to another, Prescott. It is possible that one of them has different thermal requirements and is throwing off the rest of the system, at least in some units. So if the problem is endemic to the hardware and they replace the problem parts with identically flawed parts, anyone with this issue is screwed.

So after off-loading my most secret and personal files to my old machine, I'll be sending this puppy to obedience school for a week or two. Wish her luck.

Lemons

Dell tech support has now devoured about 7 hours of my life. Each call is like another wave of infantry storming a beach already blistered by repeated assaults. Each time we get a little farther toward the target, but we still have pick our way amongst the debris and the fallen on the way there. After explaining the problem to five seperate people and then doing what they robotically spit back, we have finally exhausted all the normal tech support procedures and we're now into "let me research this and I'll get back to you." I have a feeling that this will end in a box heading for the service depot, but we'll see. Even if that has a likely degree of success, I've lost a lot of confidence in what has been, up until this point, an excellent piece of hardware. Spending $3000 for an ultimate gaming machine that stops playing games after 6 months doesn't seem like a sound investment.

Still more buyer's remorse: I found out today that Congressman Steve Rothman, whom I voted for, voted yea on House Joint Resolution 10: "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." Fuck him.

For those of you keeping score, if this amendment passes the Senate and makes it past the states, Rob Cordry's political satire on the Daily Show would be constitutionally prohibited. Thank God, because in this age of terrorism, war, widening social inequality and environmental degradation, the ONE THING WE CAN'T AFFORD is some jerk shitting on a piece of nylon.

Update: Buyer beware. I ordered a delicious chicken sandwich today and when I got back to the office I found there was no chicken on it.

Also Gespieltes Zarathustra

My God, it's full of franchises

So E3 is upon us. The armies of marketers rally to the corporate banners and scream their fearsome warcries. Wi-fi! Teraflops! Sequels! Market shares! By now you've probably seen images of the big three, including Sony's weird PS-a-rang. There is truly some impressive hardware in the making here, including a PS3 that can output to dual screen HDTVs. Who the hell has two HDTVs? I don't know, but I'm sure they can afford all three next gen consoles without having to look at the charge account.

But what's really amazing about all the new information coming down the pike is how much I don't give two shits. One shit, yes, I obviously give that, since I'm bothering to write on the topic. But two? No. I haven't had enough fiber.

Seriously, I can't get excited about gaming hardware anymore. Everyone has a technological fanboy apex, I think. My friend Nick's crested with the Super Nintendo. Mine lasted heartily into the PS2 era. Some people crapped out on the C64 or the 2600. And then there are Mac people, who are clearly iSane.

The point is, it's very hard for me to get worked up about specs, performance, or even actual graphics. We have evolved gaming entertainment to the point where graphics just don't really matter. If you want to express an artistic element, you don't have to parse thousands of concepts down into a few lines of code anymore. Ninjas can appear fully-formed from the mists of nightmares and interact directly with a man's jugular vein in sparkling crimson 3D. At some point an increased level of texture detail on the blood stain just doesn't add anything to the experience. Hell, Tenchu has some of the worst polygon clipping around, and it's still just a fun game to play.

So what do they have ready for the intial releases? More plumbers, more Madden's, and God help us, more Tekken. Tekken 6? At least Capcom had the decency to add words to each sequel (Super Final Street Fighter 2 EX Alpha Smurf Ultra Turbo, anyone?). Not everyone can make a Katamari Damacy, but why is anyone excited about all the same warmed-over crap? How many times can you make the same damn game? Oh, this time I can shoot the aliens with RED lasers? Awesome.

They are also making more Final Fantasies and Metal Gear games. Because kids don't read enough today, and we if we keep feeding them poorly-translated and awkwardly-written stuff like this, they may stop altogether.

Perhaps I am just becoming grouchy and old, with my red checkered bath robe and baseball bat, sitting on my front lawn yelling at the neighborhood kids as they run by with their PSPs. But I still play far more games than is healthy for my daily schedule. I bust up criminals in CoH. I tear around San Andreas in my stolen Infernus. You've seen me wax weird about the Sims. I keep an eye out for peripherals and accessories to improve my laptop, which is a monster gaming station. But I just don't think I'm going to plunk down anything this year on a console. Feh.

A Reading

From the Book of Snark

I said I was going to stop posting on politics, but I never said anything about religion. I guess I'm skirting the edge with this one.

The always entertaining Jerry Falwell:

Throughout the book of Judges, God calls the Israelites to go to war against the Midianites and Philistines. Why? Because these nations were trying to conquer Israel, and God's people were called to defend themselves.

President Bush declared war in Iraq to defend innocent people. This is a worthy pursuit. In fact, Proverbs 21:15 tells us: "It is joy to the just to do judgment: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity."

One of the primary purposes of the church is to stop the spread of evil, even at the cost of human lives. If we do not stop the spread of evil, many innocent lives will be lost and the kingdom of God suffers.

Poor interpretations of scripture are more common than low-interest loans, and anyone selling you either is worthy of some skepticism. Insert the Reverend Falwell into the mix and skepticism becomes just the down payment on a whole portfolio of sarcastic derision.

Jerry here is engaging in the ancient sport of reconciling the "hey, don't kill people" elements of the Bible with the "hey, go kill those people, they suck" elements. The rest of the article explains itself rather well and does not hinge on this one passage. That's good, because it seems like grammatically he got it wrong. The way he presents it, he seems to argue that it is the role of the "just" to pass judgement on the "workers of iniquity." The just shall take joy in this justice, and the iniquitous shall have destruction. That's not how I read it.

"Destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity." Shall be what? Shall be joy. Destruction shall be joy to the workers of iniquity just as justice shall be joy to the just. It's not a call to arms, it's an observation of human nature, perhaps made over some really good lox and bagels down at the corner deli, don't they make it just exactly right there, it's to die for. That crazy Solomon, what a character - always has his eyes open, he does.

A lot of people don't seem to realize that parts of the Bible are extremely funny. Here you have literally thousands of years of human history, recorded and edited by dozens of different authors across many distinct regions and cultures. It has been translated, transcribed and transposed by hundreds of scribes and set into every political and social context imaginable. I'm pretty sure at least one of those revered bookworms told a fart joke at some point. The 20th century didn't invent irony, we just developed a faster delivery system for it.

Proverbs is one of the best, because the entries are so compact, and Solomon himself is quite a cut-up. Some of my favorites:

21:2 Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the Lord pondereth the hearts.

21:9 It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.
Go on, tell me that image isn't funny.

21:19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman.
For a guy with 300 concubines, seems like Sol slept on the couch a lot.

21:22 A wise man scaleth the city of the almighty, and casteth down the strength of the confidence thereof.

21:23 Whoso keepeth his mouth and tongue keepeth his soul from troubles.
Or in the words of Mark Twain, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

And that's all from Chapter 21. Solomon goes on to discuss proper table etiquette in Chapter 23 and dating techniques in 31. His secret? Go dutch. Seriously, verse 14.

Standard Livejournal Entry

[mood:|languorous]

I have been soooo lazy this week. Seriously, once I finished the Technologist segments that were giving me trouble I just never got back to it. Then I sketched out another Mustang Gemini issue and never worked on it, then I thought of a random new short and just never wrote it. Plus I'm sitting on a comic idea while my drawing skills atrophy.

Instead I've been watching TV, reading other blogs, and splitting time between Grand Theft Auto and City of Heroes. This has become Standard Operating Procedure. Go me.

Plus I've been thinking about some serious Deep Shit for the past week - issues of life, death, love and whether or not we are all just morally-equivalent cosmic meat. That kinda puts a damper on my usual mental circus of action-packed gaslamp fantasy worlds, spacefaring cowgirls and distopian metahuman empires.

Give me attention or I will shoot this Pokémon™

Part of the problem is I'm not particularly motivated to do creative work at all at the moment. The initial rush of the sense of personal acomplishment that comes with "art for it's own sake" has worn a little thin. If I don't get any positive feedback - the sense that someone somewhere has at least read and acknowledged the work - then why bother posting at all? I can just as easily appreciate my own work on my hard drive as I can on a distant nameless free server.

Several people have mentioned in real life that they enjoy some of the things I've written here, but the biggest, most time-consuming works have gotten very few comments online. I don't like to be a counter-hit queen, but that's disappointing. (Counter Hit Queen, by the way, would be a great name for a Freddie Mercury tribute band.)

So for those of you who check in from time to time, what do you think, huh? Technologist good? Bad? Meh? Mustang Gemini interesting? Toss me a frickin' bone here.

This will be my last LJ "poor me" post. I promise.

You don't vote for kings

A self-perpetuating autocracy

Recently I've become intensely interested in the Burger King pantheon of advertising. It's new, it's hip, it's odd and frequently disturbing. Amazingly, it makes me more likely to actually eat at Burger King, unlike McDonald's ads, which fill me with the desire to shove iron spikes into my tongue in an effort to prevent me from eating anything ever again.

I think my fascination finally crested the point of "actually looking shit up" with the Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch commercials, featuring Hootie sans Blowfish. You've seen it.

Let Her Fry

You can see it again in its long form by clicking on the picture, or you can read all about it at the ad agency's website. Have you ever looked really closely at this thing? It's hypnotic, like a deep fried train wreck covered in cheese. It's also deeply sexual in a "Dynasty opening credits" kinda way. "Nice caboose?" "Breasts that grow on trees?" Milk Maidens slopping ranch dressing on each other, while cowboys relax by gently growing, precisely-placed giant fries? I work in advertising and I took a women's studies class, dammit, I know what's going on here!

Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami are the people behind the entire campaign. They originated the new look of the King (derived from a 1970s BK toy found on eBay), the whole subservient Chicken bit (featured in the Hootie ad if you look closely), and just about every BK spot for the past year. You can read all about their edgy counter-culture approach in Slate. They don't seem to have a very long pedigree advertising-wise, which probably plays a big role in their style. Ad agencies are notoriously stuffy.

The money quote of the article, in reference to the new Double Croissanwich, is this:

"Our research showed there was space for a larger, more indulgent build," says Paul Macaluso, Burger King product manager for breakfasts.

First of all, how cool would it be to be "product manager for breakfasts?" For the whole worldwide Burger King operation, no less? Paul Macaluso can walk into any BK in the universe and DEMAND extra eggs and deep fried bacon, and they'd have to give it to him. Why? Because he's the Product Manager for Breakfasts, bitch. Oh yeah.

Now, that quote is from October. Apparently a double size Croissanwich did not satisfy the howling hungry maw of the American breakfaster, however. So in the year 2005, the King called upon his subjects to construct a new sandwich. A sandwich of epic proportions - a breakfast confection for the ages - a gustatory megalith to dwarf the feeble sandwiches of men. A work of meat, egg, dairy and grain which, when complete, would blot out the sun itself. It's name would be simple, free of embellishment, and merely state plainly the physical properties of the great work: The Enormous Egg Omelette Sandwich.

Size Comparison

The point of the "EEOS" is to generate in you the sort of indulgent wanton desire that drives you to put chocolate milk on your Cocoa Puffs. (You should do that sometime, by the way.) You wouldn't want to eat this every morning if you value your aorta, but you want to TRY this thing. Just once. Just to tempt the cholesterol reaper. I like the fact that the healthy-living backlash - the anger over being contstantly told that Americans are fat goobery slabs of dough - has actually generated an expanded market for an expanded sandwich. It gives me new hope for capitalism that the Invisble Hand of the Market is apparently signalling for a second serving of pie.

Bad Dog

No no no no no no no no no no no no.

They cancelled Teen Titans to bring us this?

My problem is not so much with the concept as with the secondary characters. Watch the preview and see if you can figure out which one is stabbing me in the brain. Go ahead, I'll wait.

...

Done? Ok, here's the thing. I have no problem with a Kryptonian dog coming to Earth and befriending a human household sans Clark. I'll even grant the need for a sidekick cat somewhere in close enough proximity to provide comic relief.

But Ace? ACE the BATDOG?! Bruce Wayne felt the need to dress his ROTTWEILLER in a BATSUIT to hide his IDENTITY and look more INTIMIDATING? ARGH!

I can stop whenever I want

HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.
We tend to believe that the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind, although we do not generally believe that everything we do affects the brain. I am convinced that if someone was to yell at me from across the street my brain could be affected and my life might changed. That is why your mother always said, ‘Don’t hang out with those bad kids.’ Mama was right. Thought changes our life and our behaviour.

I have taken to reading political bloggers with a ferocity and an investment of self that surprises even me. Folks like Digby, Steve Gilliard, Kos, and Juan Cole occupy a stunningly large portion of my daily mental calisthenics, often against my will. They are a form of mild candy-coated stimulant - softening the higher brain functions, focusing energy, riling passions. Outrages and implausible hypocracy are laid before me in a delectable smorgasbord of political diatribe. I can hunt and pick through endless articles, sampling every variety of righteous anger until I find the morsels I can really savor.

And when I tire of the rush of carbs and sweets I can jump on over to Red State, Powerline, or Little Green Footballs for my meaty tenderloin steak of outrage. I can peruse the Daou Report, experience every recipe on the menu for partisan hatred and walk away with a more distinguished, experienced palette on which to build my personal belief system.

Now, obviously I enjoy and respect a lot of the writing and commentary on the first batch of blogs - that's what draws me to them. There is nothing wrong with indulging in the writers that you like. And there's also nothing wrong with taking a long look at the words and beliefs of the people you're likely to disagree with - that second set. In fact it's the intellectually honest thing to do. But the problem is, after gorging on both sides of the issues and listening to the vindictiveness for so long, you can't stop. It becomes a part of you. And if that vindictiveness brews into a solid hatred, well good rarely comes of that.

Hatred is a poison. Many people in political talking circles have fallen to it. Hard. They've fallen so far that they can't make reasonable judgements about anything because their decisions are ruled by their hatreds.

I came to the realization recently that I hate Republicans. I want to make this perfectly clear - I don't have anything against conservative thinking. Liberalism, conservativism, whatever, those things don't matter to me because rational people can debate ideology in rational ways. I'm also not a Democrat or a member of any other political group. But I hate the Republican party. I hate what they do and say, I hate what they supposedly stand for. I think the Republican leadership is morally bankrupt, un-American, and motivated by evil self-interest and they need to be stopped. Fuck them all.

I don't want to hate anyone. Hatred is not something that comes easily, or at least it shouldn't. Mom always used to say not to use the word hate. It's too powerful. You can dislike, not care for, disparage, rue, even sneer at something, but don't toss around HATE lightly. But there it is - a swollen, pus-filled ripe boil of anger and resentment directed squarely at the heart of the Republican party.

And I'm not keen on popping it any time soon.

It's not clear where exactly the hate came from. Either people started doing far more outrageous and horrible things in the last few years that really got me going, or the Internet has simply made them more accessible. We could just switch off the Ethernet connection and drift in blissful silence and darkness to bleed off a little hate I suppose, but as in the Abu Gharib scandal, the problem isn't the cameras, it's the abuse. I have resigned myself to keep hating as long as they keep doing hateful things. When they stop, hopefully I'll be able to stop as well, but I'm probably in for a long, unpleasant wait. I wish there were another way out that didn't involve giving up on my own principles and beliefs - the "ability to accept the things I cannot change." Some of us are not so gracious to posess such humility.

So with that cathartic element on the table for all to see (and the FBI now monitoring the page for anti-American sentiment, thank you Patriot Act), I pledge to all readers thus: there will be no more overt political posts on Escapism Artist. I'm going to purge the hatred from this outlet. No links, no discussion, no commentary. Stuff will show up in the comments listings I'm sure, but the petty hatreds of mortal politics will no longer tread on the other content of this blog.

I'll just post excessive diatribes on Jason's. I'm sure he'll appreciate that.

Where Fiction and News Collide

Steve Gilliard has an excellent essay on Hunter S. Thompson, alternative journalism (blogs), and the state of modern American fiction:

The worst thing to ever happen to writing was the writing program. Because it allowed people to focus on the trivia in their lives. The greatness of Heller and Mailer escapes these mindless twits nattering about their cheating dads and pill popping moms.

...

It is masturbation in print for the most part, and irrelevant. You would hardly know that men are hunting men in the mountains of Afghanistan and dodging roadside bombs in Iraq. The world of the vital has escaped our fiction, to be replaced by the world of the trivial and self-involved. Why? Because that is what drives the writing program, those who write well about themselves, but without the real introspection needed to be honest.

He goes on to link Thompson's brand of outlaw writing to the current crop of outcasts that run the blogosphere (God, I hate that word!) - they are the inheritors of the rude pursuit of truth at the expense of popularity or political success. As mush as I enjoy reading them, I won't get quite so misty-eyed about the wide array of political bloggers shouting to their cults of personality from their keyboards and sniping people they disagree with to satisfy their own sense of moral or intellectual superiority. But I get the appeal.

No, I'm more interested in the "fiction as navel-gazing" meme he's got going on here. Having sat through or listened to the resultant offal from various creative writing courses, I've long known that 90% of what the average person writes is absolute crap. Creative writing simply lowers the bar for printability. Self-delusional hero fantasy? Print it! Social revenge drama? They'll love it! Wonderments about the rich inner lives of your pets? Satirical gold! Items that would normally remain in the private sketch pad dungeons of professional writers become shared whole-cloth fiction pieces with minimal editing. It's the root of the self-publishing industry that the Nielsen Haydens are always daggering.

Even forgiving the amateurs that have wheedled their way into the professional publishing world, unapologetic about the badness of their work, Gilliard's main point is that our good fiction is also pointless and banal, because that is what the market hungers for. I believe that it is pointless to bemoan the state of modern aesthetics as hollow, because people have been doing that since they invented aesthetics in the first place, but there is clearly a sickness of self-congratulatory crap in a lot of modern writing. One look at the soulless makeshift rafts afloat on the fantasy sea makes that pretty clear.

I'm not a budding professional writer. I have no plans to make money from anything I write, and I'll be lucky if any work of mine ends up in the hands of a decent editor. Most of my work will never be polished, never carefully examined or even read by a large number of people. This forum on blogspot is probably the closest I'll get to publication. But I'm not so desperate for recognition or blase about my own literary importance to think that I can just post here whatever drivel spills off the page. I have, you might say, some standards.

Last week I wrote a great tragic little piece called "The Naked Heart on the Sidewalk." It's a thoughtful, emotional examination of life in the suburban business world. It features a poor soul despondent over the lack of truth and warmth in his personal life. It's a commentary on the hollow lottery of meeting someone nice and building relationships in an increasingly narrow social circle. It's absolute drippingly bittersweet horseshit derived from my inability to get a fucking date for the weekend. No one will see it, not because it's too personal to share, but because it is an utter and complete waste of anyone else's time. It's called practice writing, and no one needs to see it.

Thoughtful reading should be about more than just getting your weekly dose of escapism, genre fiction, and wankery. It should allow you to explore worlds and lives outside of your personal comforts and expectations. That means good writers have a responsibility (beyond making sales) to tell stories of a larger world, to examine human events honestly with an eye turned outward. As much as certain politcial persuasions may dislike it, we depend on our educated, thoughtful and articulate "chattering class" to provide the moral secular compass of our society. When that compass is absent or hard to find, where do we gravitate? To the howling cachophany of empty opinion that is today's Internet.

If you think that's elitism, here is my counter-argument.

Arc Impulse!

I am trying to save money these days. But corporations such as Namco - giant uncaring soulless wonderful awesome godlike video game producing Namco - make it very difficult to do so. They make video games and I buy them. This is a simple relationship as unbreakable and unignorable as a diamond monofilament tether wrapped around my larynx.

Xenosaga II is coming out now.

Now, I never actually finished Xenosaga I: Der Wille zur Macht. In the grand tradition of Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears (all part of the same genetic line) I stopped playing at a certain point where it became ridiculously hard and figured I'd get back to it later. But now I have to finish Xenosaga - I have to dive back into that hanger bay and take down that giant quantum cannon-toting robot - because some salient facts have just come to my attention.

Xenosaga II has team up attacks. Jesus in heaven above, Xenosaga II has team up attacks.

For those of you coming late to class, Chrono Trigger is perhaps the greatest platform RPG of all time. It is distilled addictive adventure in the 16-bit tradition, encompassing all the greatest elements of the genre. Chrono Cross is it's direct story descendent, delving into issues of causality and time travel directly related to the original story. Xenogears is the half-completed conceptual descendant, encompassing much of the style and charm of the Chrono series while being very much its own animal. I say half-completed because they literally stopped making the final 10 chapters of the game after Final Fantasy VII came out and Square realized that the game was going to look out of date by the time it launched. So the second disc is a major let down and consists mainly of long cut scenes and linear boss battles to move you quickly to the finale. Still, it remains a favorite.

Xenosaga is a pseudo-cousin of Xenogears published by many of the same developers after they made the move from Square to Namco. It is ambitious, potentially involving 6 seperate chapters each with a 2-3 year development schedule. It's storyline is barely comprehensible but generates a level of intrigue unique to the Japanese style of pop storytelling. See also Metal Gear Solid, Escaflowne, Evangelion, and any Final Fantasy incarnation with 32 bits or more.

So what's the big deal with team-up attacks? Chrono Trigger had them, and they made the game. As you advance you gain special abilities with each character. Eventually they learn to combine these abilities in various ways. As you progress then, you may wish to swap out the characters from time to time to produce significantly different effects and strategies. Typically with these sorts of games it becomes a chore to level up your less favorite characters, but Chrono made it ceaselessly fun to explore each and every combo. And there were a lot.

So Xenosaga II has just touched off a geek nerve in me that is difficult, nay, impossible to ignore. Damn you, Namco, you beautiful bastards!

Starting the Show

We all engage in a measure of escapism. We run from reality - shun it, ignore it, turn our backs to it when it appears unpleasant. It is a normal function of who we are to filter our personal experiences to reach a desired, even necessary state of calm or comfort. Much of life is too intense to deal with without some measure of daydreaming, fantasy, or entertainment. This much is obvious. But the escapist takes the process to the logical extreme, shutting out all unbearable facts in favor of the fantastic.

Escapism is a withdrawl - a personal internal process designed to shield the individual from outside forces. And it is almost always a liability in the end. So how can Escapism be art?

Escape Artists are performers. They revel in the limelight of amazing accomplishments before an awed crowd. Onlookers gasp as the straightjacketed and handcuffed Houdini wriggles free of his chains while suspended 60 feet above the pavement. The audience roars as a stage magician emerges from a locked steamer trunk submerged in a tank of water. Escape Artists celebrate the dropping of chains, the victory of will and tenacity over bondage and fear. They champion hope.

They are also intimately familiar with the means of their confinement. Escape Artists do not truly break free of their chains... they love their chains. They study and collect them. Examine every link, every lock, looking for weaknesses and flaws. They explore every brick of the prison, find the back door, and leave a skeleton key hidden by the exit. They voluntarily remain bonded to their art rather than break free of it. The escape is an external illusion.

So an Escapism Artist is not one who engages in wholehearted escapism - skipping off to realms of adventure alone. Rather, he examines every facet of his reality, every loophole, every logical fallacy, every dark place where things don't add up. And in doing so, he begins to understand what people are looking for in their daydreams, fantasies, and entertainment. Armed with such knowledge (and the cheats they provide), the Escapism Artist can perform feats of ficton, art, and storytelling beyond the wildest dreams of the audience.

Writers are Escapism Artists. Filmakers are Escapism Artists. Painters, photographers, comic artists, politicians, storytellers, comedians all present a vision of reality that others may indulge in while they themselves merely present the trick, then return backstage to replace the firecrackers, refill the smoke machine, dim the lights, and prepare for another performance.